Amsterdam is the greatest city on Earth – but not for the reasons you think
Walk from Amsterdam’s central train station towards the city centre and you might well reach the conclusion that this isn’t much of a city. The Dutch capital has only about 900,000 residents, making it a bit larger than Leeds but a good deal smaller than Birmingham.
The sights here are also somewhat unremarkable: while there are some lovely old churches and houses there’s no stunning centrepiece which tourists can crowd around: you’ll not find a jaw-dropping tower, cathedral or parliament building here. The Royal Palace on Dam Square looks, a historian once witheringly noted, like a bank. No, this city’s proudest symbols are defiantly humble: the bicycle, the tulip, the slender town houses which line the many canals. Even the food here is functional rather than delicious, and the weather – well, the less one says about the Dutch weather, the better.
Against this backdrop, it’s perhaps inevitable that when I first moved to the Netherlands 15 years ago, I was distinctly underwhelmed by Amsterdam. I largely agreed with the verdict of many Dutch people: Amsterdam is too expensive, too crowded, and has too many tourists. A turning point came, however, when I broke my leg a couple of years ago.
Following surgery I was forced to spend months limping slowly through Amsterdam to and from work, with a cane in hand, rather than whizzing through it on a bicycle. In need of regular rest stops, I found myself carefully studying buildings I’d previously zoomed past, poking my head through open doorways and nosing through courtyards and churches.
When my leg throbbed too much, I’d sit on a bench or canal wall for a while and read about the history of places I was walking through. And rather to my surprise, after a few months of this I was forced to conclude: Amsterdam is not underpowered or boring. In fact, it’s one of the greatest – perhaps even the greatest – city in the world.
Why? Consult the tourist guidebooks or popular websites and you’ll probably read that Amsterdam’s secret is that it’s the “Most Liberal City In The World”. However, this analysis has never struck me as quite right. Amsterdam certainly has more than its share of gay bars and brothels, and happily tolerates eccentricities which might be frowned on in Brussels or Bonn.
Yet anyone who spends much time here will tell you that many Dutch people are actually quite conservative, in the neat and tidy sense of the word, and think there are few things more important in life than keeping your books balanced and your doorstep freshly scrubbed. What makes Amsterdam interesting is not its unthinking liberalism, but the way that the battle between the two halves of the national psyche – Dutch tolerance and Dutch discipline – plays out every day.
What is true: Amsterdam has played an outsized role in the history of the world. When I first began walking the city, I already knew some of the basics: Anne Frank, Rembrandt, the Rijksmuseum. However, it was only as I dug deeper that I came to appreciate the extraordinary influence this soggy city has had.
In the 17th century, the rise of the VOC, a worthy rival to the British East India Company, helped build a Dutch trading empire which stretched from Brazil to Borneo, yet was run from a modest headquarters which still stands today. Dutch traders founded New York and Jakarta, and essentially invented the share, the limited company and the stock exchange. Amsterdam was a kind of 17th-century Silicon Valley, packed with bold entrepreneurs and inventors who introduced products like coffee and Chinese porcelain to Europe, and pioneered surgery, printing, mapmaking and microscopy.
Spinoza grew up in the city’s Jewish Quarter, Descartes worked in exile here, and it was in Amsterdam that thinkers such as Locke, Galileo, Descartes, and Voltaire had their work printed, at a time when their heretical views weren’t acceptable elsewhere. Rembrandt was inspired by walks along the river Amstel, and Amsterdam’s merchants helped finance the careers of artists such as Vermeer, Frans Hals and Jan Steen. Centuries before the world’s oligarchs were clustering in New York, London and Dubai, this chilly little town by the North Sea was the world capital of finance, art and trade.
Yet Amsterdam’s achievements are not just historic. Walk through the city today and you’ll find one of the most stunning urban landscapes in the world, with many canals and streets looking much as they did 400 years ago. But you’ll also find more modern neighbourhoods which also have their own charms, such as the tight warren of streets in West, the hipster post-industrial district of NDSM, the colourful public housing around Bijlmer Arena, and the new neighbourhoods at IJburg, which float on brackish water like a collection of bath toys.
Wherever you go you’ll find the same incredible infrastructure and public transport, excellent schools and hospitals, and low crime rates. The fact that political and royal power is concentrated in the Hague means Amsterdam doesn’t dominate the national economy in the way that London does. The cultural life – not just big museums and art galleries but also dance music parties, orchestras, pop-up theatres, and film festivals – is superb. And the quality of life is sky-high. The average person here works about an hour a day less than the average Briton, yet GDP per capita is about 20 per cent higher.
In recent years, Amsterdam has sometimes got a bad press. Locals complain that tourism has got out of hand, that tolerance has gone too far and that houses are unaffordable. Yet Amsterdam is a place which has already successfully reinvented itself several times over. As I learnt on my walks, Amsterdam rose to great prominence in its Golden Age, then fell from glory, then rose to riches again in a Second Golden Age, then was wrecked and humiliated in the mid-20th century, and then rose yet again to become one of the most beautiful and dynamic cities in the world. Amsterdammers know better than anyone how to take a punch and then get back up again.
In a couple of months, Amsterdam will celebrate its 750th birthday. The authorities are planning a celebration during which the motorway which encircles the city will be closed to traffic and host an enormous street party, with Heineken and Amstel galore. It’s hard to say what the future holds for a place which lies several metres below sea level. But based on past experience, I wouldn’t bet against the Dutch. There’s a good chance they’ll still be celebrating in another 750 years.
Three burning questions about the Dutch
1. Why are they so tall?
As the Dutch population grew in the 17th and 18th centuries, the grass which carpeted the polders turned out to make perfect food for cattle. The Friesian breed, in particular, became a Dutch icon.
Much milk was drunk, and some was turned into cheeses, which were often named after the towns where they were traded, such as Gouda and Edam. As dairy output grew, its consumption also had a curious side effect: it made the Netherlands a nation of giants.
Studies show that in the mid-1800s, the average Dutchman was about 5ft 4in tall; shorter than most Europeans and Americans.
Over the next 150 years, however, as dairy consumption rose, the Dutch soared past everyone else. Today, the average Dutchman is over 6ft tall and the average Dutch woman only 5in shorter, making them the tallest people in the world.
2. Why are they so stingy?
While the average British household had, in 2020, savings equivalent to 7.5 per cent of their household income, the average Dutch household had nearly 18 per cent stashed away. When a Dutch broadcaster recently published a list of suggestions for how lottery winners should handle their newfound wealth, highlights included “don’t make any hasty decisions”, “just keep working” and “work with an expert adviser to make a financial plan”. Thrift isn’t a lifestyle choice here, it’s a national religion.
The traditional explanation is that it has a lot to do with religion. It’s easy to forget that until a few decades ago, this remained one of the most religious countries in Europe; a place where both Protestant and Catholic churches played a huge role in public life, and where everything from schools to hospitals was segregated along religious lines. Things are very different now, but old values around work ethics and humility still run deep.
The Netherlands’ history of war and flooding has also perhaps reinforced a sense that people should always prepare for the worst. In a country where thousands starved to death within living memory, extravagance and waste are no laughing matter.
3. Why are they so rude?
American politeness strikes most Dutch people as absurdly insincere, while the British tendency to hedge, prevaricate and bluster is borderline offensive. To Dutch eyes, being blunt is not a sign of weakness but a badge of honour.
The habit of directness is rooted in Dutch history and geography. “Holland doesn’t have mountains,” the novelist Cees Nooteboom once wrote. “Everything’s out in the open. No mountains, no caves. Nothing to hide. No dark places in the soul.” The country was founded on Calvinist values of honesty and transparency, and thrived during the Golden Age partly by serving as a refuge for rebels and innovators who were unwelcome elsewhere.
The constant need to defend against flooding also had a profound impact: with one person’s land at risk if another failed to maintain their dikes, it was essential that decisions be made collectively.
In the Dutch “polder model”, governments are always coalitions and major policy changes often introduced only after months of negotiation between different parties, unions and business leaders. The whole system depends on everyone feeling free to speak their mind.
Ben Coates is the author of ‘The Invention of Amsterdam: A history of Europe’s Greatest City in Ten Walks’, published by Scribe and available from the Telegraph Bookshop (£12.99).
